The biocultural paradigm: the neural connection between science and mysticism.
New discoveries in perceptual psychology, brain chemistry, brain evolution, brain development, ethology, cultural anthropology, the more recent work of MacLean on the structure of the brains and the discovery by Gazzaniga of the role of the, so-called, "interpreter module," are the foundations of a new paradigm on human cortical information processing, called by its discoverer, Dr. M. Colavito, the "biocultural paradigm." This paradigm shows that biology and culture act on one another as the conditioning parameters of neurocultural information. Through mutual interaction biology in humans becomes culture, and vice versa, culture opens and stimulates the neural passages of the brains, accounting thus for the varieties of brains in humans, and for cultural diversity. Culture conditions and stimulates biology, while biology conditions and makes culture possible. Cultures and brains may be distinguished from one another through identification with certain functions or combination of functions that are exercised habitually, or become neural hard-wire through repetition or habit. This new model has replaced older and simpler models of the nature/ nurture controversy, such as the unextended rational substance of Descartes, the tabula rasa of Locke, the associated-matrix of Hume, the passive, reinforcement-driven animal of Skinner, and the genetically hard-wired robot of the sociobiologists. However, elements of these earlier models are included in the new one, but the conversation about human experience has changed, and, therefore, the human images of ourselves. This change was forced on scientists by the importance of the conditionality of the experience of "I" and "not-I" as described by Alex Comfort in his book I and That, and was introduced in the conversations some of us already had with each other. This article focuses on the "I" and "not-I" experiences with a description of the "not-I" or "oceanic" or "mystical" experience to clarify the new paradigm of "biocultures."
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Biocultural Research Institute, St. Augustine, Florida 32085, USA.
D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D009228:Mysticism; D009462:Neurology